three terms on the new hampshire executive council. pappas isssman also the owner of a restaurant and the first openly gay person elected to congress by new hampshire voters. representative hayes first came to national attention when president obama named her 2016 national teacher of the year at a white house ceremony. she is only the second african-american to represent connecticut in congress. the first was congressman gary republican, who also represented the fifth district in the 1990's. new congress, no leaders. watch it on seat -- new leaders. watch it all on c-span. >> former massachusetts republican governor bill weld has been mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in 2020. he spoke at the politics and eggs series in new hampshire.

this is just under an hour. [applause] >> thank you, jim brett, my longtime friend and colleague. what a pleasure it always is to be back in new hampshire. since i was a little kid, i've had a happy relationship with the waters and woods of new hampshire, enjoying my visits to enter, only one on earth, as you know. and then center sandwich and now guilt some. and i've had my share of political memories from this state, as well. i was president of nashua for the famous reagan-bush debate in 1980. i campaigned with bush 41 in the 1992, and actually man to the microphone on primary night for him. and i enjoyed traveling the state with governor drudge greg, a close colleague and friend,

when he campaigned successfully for the senate here. but it's not so much my fond memories of new hampshire that bring me here today. i'm here actually because i think our country is in grave peril, and i cannot sit any longer, quietly on the sidelines. we have a president who openly praises and encourages despotic and authoritarian leaders abroad while going out of his way, seemingly, to insult and even humiliate our democratic allies. the question presents itself, white? we -- why? we have a president who sets out nuclear arms agreements with other nuclear powers. why? he has lightly tossed around threats using nuclear weapons against north korea. why? he has railed against the very

idea of the rule of law, the cornerstone of all of our individual freedoms. why? he's virtually spat upon the idea we should have freedom of the press. why is that? he's failed to call out and announce appalling instances of racism in our country. why? he ridicules and dismisses the looming threats from climate change. why is that? he has demonstrated a repeated pattern of vindictiveness. there's really no other word for it. he calls it counterpunching, but it's really vindictiveness. he acts like a schoolyard bully, except of course, when he's around other bullies, like mr. putin. then he turns, ingratiating, all smiles, kicks the american press out of the oval office, and has his summit meeting with mr. putin with no news media present except the state organ of russia.

for what possible reason? the answer to all these questions, and i do say this with a heavy heart. i wish it were not so. is that we have a president whose priorities are skewed towards promotion of himself rather than towards the good of the country. he may have great energy and considerable raw talent, but he does not use them in ways that promote democracy, truth, justice, and equal opportunity for all. to compound matters, our president is it simply too unstable to carry out the duties of the highest executive office in the land, which include the specific duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. in a competent and professional manner, he's simply in the wrong place. they say the president has captured the republican party in washington.

as he himself might tweet, "sad." it's even sadder that republicans in washington, many of them, exhibit this symptoms of stockholm symptom -- stockholm syndrome, identifying with their captor. we wasted time humoring this president, indulging his narcissism, and his compulsive, irrational behaviors. recently, there have been occasions where our national government seemed almost a charade, as in the lights are on in the white house, but no ones at home. many people around the president seem to be consumed, impassively admiring the emperor's new clothes, as he insists. the situation is not yet hopeless, but we do need a midcourse correction. we don't need six more years of the antics we have seen. we need to make a change and install leaders who know that

character counts. many aspects of our current morass in washington cry out for bold action now before it's too late. first of all, the amount of extra debt being run up in washington is completely crazy. the administration is spending $1 trillion a year more than it takes in. and they call themselves conservatives. that's $1 trillion of debt for our children and grandchildren to pay off. and that is not fair, to put it mildly, to members of next generation or millennials. none of the states do this. most states require by the constitution that the governors budget be balanced. unfortunately, especially in the left wing of the democratic party, socialism seems to have replaced any notion of spending restraint. we need the opposite of socialism. in the federal budget, the two

most important tasks are to cut spending and to cut taxes. and cutting spending comes first. we need to zero base the federal budget and based each appropriation every year on outcomes actually achieved the previous year, not on last year's appropriation plus 5%, which is how altogether too many folks in washington use as a starting point. it is actually possible to cut spending year-over-year. i did that when i got into office, and i was rated the most fiscally conservative governor in the country by the wall street journal and the cato institute. so massachusetts wasn't called taxachusetts anymore. this president should be able to do the same. and don't worry, mr. president, i would say. it doesn't hurt the economy. our unemployment rate in massachusetts one from the highest rate to the lowest rate

among all the industrialized states in my first three years in office. there's also a huge opportunity to cut federal spending by contracting out the provision of social services to the private sector, particularly the vast network of nonprofit organizations, who are all too willing to pick up that burden of delivering the services. based on our experience in massachusetts, this would save a great deal of taxpayers money and, at the same time, improve the quality of the services and the degree of compassion and dignity for the people receiving those services. the reason is that monopoly services are always less efficient, and thus, more costly than competitively priced services. so the key distinction here is not public versus private. its monopoly versus competition. the best way to deal with government spending, in fact, is

to deal with it as smokey the bear recommends dealing with fire. keep it small. keep it in a confined area. and keep it under observation. right after cutting spending comes cutting taxes. federal taxes need serious downward adjustment. i favor repealing the federal debt tax, for example, and cutting the capital gains tax rate to 10%. this would make us more competitive. and both of those taxes are not major revenue raisers. what they have in common is the perverse effect of penalizing people for a lifetime of hard work. eliminating them will increase our aggregate national wealth, which should always be a key priority of the united states government. but we also need to restructure our entire tax system. we don't need to choose between robin hood style confiscatory taxation and deficit creation tax cuts for the super rich.

we should instead take a long look at some other models, such as a 19% flat tax on income, and the famous postcard tax return. your tax return no bigger than a postcard. i read quite a lot on this subject and i believe the savings from the dramatic simplification of the internal revenue code and the whole process of taxation would be enormous. ofto health care, instead arguing endlessly and fruitlessly about whether the affordable care act should be repealed, because let's face it, we do not have a consensus in congress. there are various common sense health care issues that could be addressed immediately in washington across party lines. tosumers should be permitted establish personal health care savings accounts, and to choose their health care provider. they should be free to purchase pharmaceutical drugs across state lines, and also in other

countries, bringing the price down. their choice, not the government's choice. veterans should be permitted to receive health care from hospitals and health care providers outside the exclusive network of va hospital's. they should be able to use cannabis for the relief of posttraumatic stress disorder without losing their veterans benefits entirely, which is the case undercurrent v.a. law. the elderly must be permitted to have full access to nonaddictive drugs, which are useful for the relief of pain, including cannabis and cbd. addiction of all types should be treated as the national public health emergency, which it is. rather than as a crime of status and a top priority of the u.s. criminal justice system. we should also move on and criminal justice to bail reform,

funding for reentry programs, and other criminal justice reforms not reached by the recent first step legislation in washington. in fairness to millennials, again, who may never receive the benefits of social security, the government should permit the establishment of individual retirement accounts. and in fairness to young adults in the military, they should not be asked to risk their lives in order to engineer regime change in foreign countries at the whim of the u.s. government, even in the absence of any substantial threat to the united states. with respect to the environment and climate change, the approach of the current administration is antithetical to every principle of conservation and conservatism. and every tenet of theodore roosevelt's grand old party. whether it's as protection of a fragile ecosystem, or as

stewardship of god's creation, take a choice, there is a pressing need to act on climate change. the united states must rejoin the paris climate accords and adopt targets consonant with of those of other industrialized nations. we must protect our economy, yes, but we must also recognize that increased nastro disasters and unfamiliar weather patterns actually threaten to strip the snow from our white mountains and to melt all the mountain glaciers worldwide, upon which hundreds of millions of people depend for their only water supply. europe has their cathedrals and monuments. we have our mountains, canyons, valleys, rivers, and streams, and we had damn well better take care of them. our borders are strict -- safe in new hampshire, but if climate change is not addressed, our

coastlines and those of other countries, will be obliterated by storm surge and the melting of the polar ice cap. yet climate skeptics claim they are conservative. on the international front, the united states should return to a regime of free trade, rather than having constant recourse to tariffs. mr. smoot and mr. holly try to tariffs in june of 1930, and they fanned the flames of the great depression. when it comes to immigration, we should adopt a robust guestworker program to assist our agricultural and construction industries, particularly in the western states. we don't need a path to citizenship for 11 million people, but we do need longer work visas. under the current regime, we're simply educating our competition in our graduate schools, the best in the world, and sending them home to china, another economic competitors of the

united states. we may not need another long, impenetrable wall, but we do need short-term bridges. domestically, our most immediate priority must be jobs and wages. the two go together. what are we going to do about the fact that 25% of the jobs in the united states today won't exist in their present form in 15 years? and this is not caused by the unseen hands of globalization and the internet, but rather by the soon to be all too visible hands of robotics, drones, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and autonomous vehicles. the old jobs will be replaced by new and different jobs. but the problem is that today's workers don't yet possess the skill sets that the replacement jobs will require. and this truly is a national emergency.

and it's going to require a nationwide response. the skills required by the new jobs correspond roughly to the skills now taught in the first two years of post secondary education, or the community college level. but a displaced worker can't take two years off and pay two years tuition to acquire those skills. accordingly, i'm here to say that we should adjust our budget priorities to cover the cost of in-state tuition, not for everybody, but for those displaced workers, as we did for our returning veterans under the g.i. bill following world war ii. in addition to cut down on room and board expenses, we should encourage and embrace online education, so-called distance-learning. it's now been proved that distance learning is as effective as learning in a bricks and mortar classroom, so we should take advantage of that.

what i'm suggesting would be a tiny budget adjustment, the equivalent, in new hampshire terms, of a small, round hole in the snow, particularly if shared with the federal government. but it will solve in an office problem. it will make all the difference in the world to those displaced workers. if we do this education component right, we should be able to ensure that replacement jobs will have higher wages than the old jobs. that would truly be a happy ending. but if we do not do this, the door to the middle class may be closed to the working poor, and that would be a complete disaster, and endgame that we as a society cannot afford. a system for delivering skill sets is not the only area of education that cries out for action in the future. parents simply need more options regarding the education of their children, particularly in our inner cities.

winnie to support school choice. we need to support homeschooling. we need to support charter schools. and we need to consider seriously abolishing the united states department of education, transferring decision-making authority to the states and to the parents of school-age and college aged children. oh, and the current federal position in existing law that prevents the renegotiation of student debt, we need to repeal that one immediately. finally, it should go without saying, but as was deeply impressed on me during my seven years in the u.s. justice department, our country must always stand tall for integrity and the rule of law without fear or favor. we must insist on the rule of law. that's the foundation of everything else. as you can tell from my remarks, i care a great deal about the kind of government we have in washington. and i hope to see the republican

party assume, once again, the mantle of being the party of lincoln. energies me that our as a society are being set by the president -- sapped by the president's culture of devices this -- divisiveness in washington. america is stronger and can afford to be more generous when it is united, rather than divided. there is a place and time for opposition and dissent. there's always room for healthy debate. but there should be no hatred, no intimidation, no name-calling between the various arms of the federal government, or between groups of citizens. like president reagan, like president eisenhower, our leaders in government should seek to unite us and make us all proud to be americans, and never, ever seek to divide us. because of the many concerns i have talked about today, i have

established an exploratory committee to pursue the possibility of my running for the presidency of the united states, as a republican, in the 2020 election. i encourage those of you who are watching the current administration nervously, but saying nothing, to stand up and speak out when lines are crossed in dangerous ways. we cannot sit passively as our presses -- precious democracy slips into darkness. congress must do its duty. and as citizens, we must do hours. as we move towards the 2020 election year, each of us must also strive to remember and uphold the difference between the open-heart, open mind, and open handedness of patriotism, versus the heart heart, closed mind, and clenched fist of nativism and nationalism. in every country, there comes a

time when patriotic men and women must stand up and speak out to protect their own individual rights and the overall health of the nation. in our country, this is such a time. it's time for all people of goodwill, and our country is filled with people of goodwill, just take a stand and plant a flag, abraham lincoln might have called it the flag of the union today, we call it the flag of the united, yes, united, united states of america. thank you all very much. [applause] fmr. gov. weld: thank you. [applause] we have time for a few questions, and we have students that will have the mic.

so just wait for them to ask your question. if you could also identify yourself, that would be very helpful. i could just ask the first question, governor. you've been a republican all your life. then in 2016, you became a libertarian candidate for vp. why the switch? fmr. gov. weld: i considered myself a libertarian on longtime, and i did enjoy the 2016 campaign a great deal. and i met a lot of great people in that party. i can think of dozens of libertarians who could serve and verbally in the -- serve admirably in the government in senior positions. but i want to not dribble around the court but go right to the hoop. if you want to go one-on-one, it's got to be as an r. so, that can't be helped. that's the way this race has to be one. and it feels good to be back there with the r on my name, but i will say i'm not rejoining the

know nothing party. i'm rejoining the party of lincoln and i'm going to try to make that one stick one-on-one with our president. [applause] >> matt mayberry? >> good morning, governor. my name is matt mayberry from dover. i'm a veteran, gay, pro-choice, and a republican. fmr. gov. weld: you're my guy. >> except i don't have stockholm syndrome, though. it bothers me that you ran for the party, and came back. please talk to moderate republicans, how as republicans, we can trust you to govern as a republican and not change parties and file as independent. sorry for the tough question, but it's an important one. fmr. gov. weld: we want to do what best for the country and this is a direct way for me to do the best thing for our country.

the best way i can answer the country is look at my record governing as a republican, the first republican governor in 20 years, in the first of four republican governors in a row. we had so much success in my first term. and not only was the most fiscally conservative governor in the united states, but we revolutionized the massachusetts system of k-12 education. we put in high-stakes test in fourth, eighth, and 10th grade. and we said if you don't pass this test, you're not going to the next grade. no more social promotion, and no one is going to graduate until they are ready to go on to postgraduate education. the result was, and that was in 1993, the result was that massachusetts went from being the middle of the pack, or slightly below, to number one in the united states in both reading and mathematics every

year from 1993 to the present. now that's, that's something that's a good thing for republican governor to have done. we also, as i said, took the unemployment rate from the highest to the lowest, and at the same time, we weren't pointing fingers at anybody. we were inclusionary. i had it in asian-american commission, african-american commission, hispanic american commission that i met with every month. migrate lieutenant-governor, paul cellucci, my one regret is that he cannot be here today to enjoy this moment with me. everybody,hed out to and the result was when we ran for reelection, we got 71% of the vote in massachusetts as republicans. so, if you like those apples, you shouldn't worry about what i would do if i get to washington. >> mary from aarp has a question.

>> good morning. americans continue to pay the highest prescription drug prices in the world. no one should have to choose between buying food and taking their medicine. do you agree drug prices are too high, and if so, how specifically will you work to lower prescription drug prices and reduce costs for all americans? fmr. gov. weld: i think prescription drug prices, the cost of them as way up on top of the national agenda in washington, d.c. in all polling and all focus groups show that. i had a couple of suggestions in my remarks to permit people to take matters into their own hands, to have health savings accounts, to help buy prescription drugs across state lines, even in other counties,

countries. if they are cheaper in canada, let people go there. there's a lot of artificial restrictions created by government. no, you can't buy something from another state. that's ludicrous. i think that's a very high priority item. and it's got to be dealt with by congress. and the twin objectives of any health care initiatives should be to lower costs and maintain the quality. and our health care quality of our system is the best of the world. but we got to all pull together to pull down those costs or else, as you say, a generation is going to be disfranchised. >> we have a professor from newegg when college. -- newington college. -- new england college. >> governor, thank you.

there aren't many examples of a successful challenge to an incumbent president in our history. so, what i'm interested in knowing is, whether there's a specific moment or act, a statement from the president, that led you to conclude that it's time? fmr. gov. weld: i think it's been a series of actions over time. the one that got my attention was kicking the press out of the oval office and bringing in the russian state newspaper to superintend his summit meeting with mr. putin in the over office. that really -- oval office. that really was an act of such content -- discontent over the american people. but it's no one thing. it's a series of actions. and i would sit -- describe them as antics. if the president is reelected, that means we're looking at six more years of this. i just don't know what the

international array of nations would look like after six more years of this, but it ain't pretty, given how the president seems to enjoy using extreme rhetoric, nuclear, and other military context. as to the difficulty of challenging an incumbent president, it does lie in my mind that in the last nine elections were a sitting president ran for reelection. in four instances, that president was challenged in a primary in his own party. in all four of those instances, that president lost and did not get reelected. in the other five instances, no one stood up. there was no primary challenge. an incoming president coasted to reelection -- the incumbent president coasted to reelection. that's a nice statistic. >> ambassador bruno? >> greetings, governor. my question is, picking up on

the news of the day, as to whether you consider our country presently in a crisis, such that a national emergency should be declared. so,whether if one is whether this skews the role of congress in appropriating funds. fmr. gov. weld: you know, i don't happen to agree with the president on the immigration issue at all. and it's partly a question of tone, demonizing people from other countries. i don't like the way he does it, taking off after the parents of the kid, the young man who was killed fighting in the middle east. he criticized the parents and said, why didn't the mother say anything? she must be muzzled. what her problem? that does not show any compassion or understanding. her problem is that her son is dead and the president is attacking herself and her family because of their religion, because they are muslim. that's a very bad approach.

as to the current news of the day, the declaration of emergency, no, i don't think there's an emergency. do i think that the president deciding something is an emergency and declaring an emergency is an impeachable and removable offense? no, i don't, because there's 31 other declarations of emergency on the books right now. do i think it tickles my funny bone that suddenly $8 billion is a national emergency when the administration is overspending by $1 trillion a year? and that's going to create some smiles and other capitals. i don't think it's an emergency, but i don't think it's the end of the world. matter of fact, it's quite a character. i must have this. i'm going to grab it. >> gentleman here, i believe from new england college again. fmr. gov. weld: wow, i can't wait to get back. [laughter] >> i'm with new england college.

my question is, how do you see yourself getting republican party support and securing the nomination for president? fmr. gov. weld: well, it's going to be one voter at a time. i'm going to make my case. you heard a good bit of it today. it rests in part on my lengthy record in government, not only as governor, but working in both the house and senate, and seven years in the executive branch as a responsible official in the justice department. as jim said, i was not only u.s. attorney for five years, i was then promoted to go to washington as head of the criminal division of the justice department. i have a substantial amount of international experience, as well, and everyone in this room, and i hope everyone in new hampshire, is going to hear me talking about that experience and why i could start monday as president of the united states. and i really do believe that. i've seen enough government from all kinds of angles, federal,

state, and local, so i have a deep understanding of the way things ought to be done in washington, d.c. and if people won't buy my dog food, then i won't advance and that's too bad. but that's showbiz. if the dogs won't eat the dog food, it doesn't matter how good the promoter says it is. >> questions in the back? is difficult to see anyone raising their hands with the light. i just don't want to ignore anyone in the rear that has a question. other hands? yes answer? -- yes, sir? you want to wait for the mic? >> hello, governor. should you lose, would you support the republican nominee for president or would you support a democrat just to stop our current president? fmr. gov. weld: you know, i'm not sure about that. i find the current incumbent a difficult act to swallow.

so i'm not sure quite what i would do their. -- do there. maybe someone else will step up. maybe a third party or an independent candidate. so there may be other options. i would not be at all surprised, now that i stood up, to see other republican stand up, as well. >> other questions? maybe i can ask a question, governor. trade has been getting a bad name from both democrats and republicans. you have a little experience in trade. new this to say, the trade missions you did as governor, record number i believe. fmr. gov. weld: 16. >> you are also cochair of in independent task force to study the liberalization of the markets, of free trade for canada and mexico. we have a nafta to that's been passed by the president. it's going to the hill. lots of problems on both sides.

republicans are saying we don't like the language. is very tight, restriction on trade. democrats have problem with it on lake which regarding the environment and labor. your thoughts on nafta 2? fmr. gov. weld: i actually participated in the negotiation of nafta 1 with the president of mexico and the minister of the economy, and the minister of finance. michael wilson in canada. and on the american side, president bill clinton and newt gingrich. gingrich and i were in the white house when clinton and bill daley were assembling the votes for nafta at the very end. i think new and i delivered more republicans than the democrats were able to deliver. so i do feel strongly about that. i think it's very easy to prove that free trade benefits the united states. we have the highest productivity of any workforce in the world.

when you have the highest productivity, if you have a free exchange of goods between countries, then you're going to make more than you lose. you may have some low-wage jobs go offshore, but your high wage jobs are going to be buttress. i can prove mathematically that pretty -- free trade is good for the united states. >> maybe time for one more question, if someone has a. -- has it. >> why you? fmr. gov. weld: well, i've got a boy's regular haircut, to start with. [laughter] [applause] we're stillld: working on our letterman top 10. but i would say i'm serious about this. i have a very thick skin. i don't care what scum in on the -- what's coming in on the

tweets. once you've been head of the criminal justice department, you're not scared of anybody, i assure you. and i'm steeped in government. i thought about all these issues are longtime and i touched almost every type of issue in government. and it's more than i can say for the incumbent. but there are plenty of people who could do that job. it's not just me. but i do think it's very important that the incumbent be challenged, even confronted, with what he has been doing. so that's why me, at this point, as we go along, you'll see whether you like what you meet here. and you will get to meet me here early and often. >> we want to thank the governor for being here. [applause] again, we want to thank him for taking time to make an announcement and to make news, as he said, as the politics and

eggs. he has high regard for all of you and this organization. i want to thank him for doing that. a little momentum -- memento for your visit here. other way, governor. politics and eggs. your own tote bag. thank you, governor. [applause] >> you want a picture, ken? ken? you're going to be seeing a lot of mrs. maryland, right? >> yes. fmr. gov. weld: i know jim from past campaigns. >> thank you. [inaudible] >> can i get a picture with you? fmr. gov. weld: yeah, great.

>> let me get my niece to take a picture. [inaudible] >> awesome, thank you. fmr. gov. weld: thank you. [inaudible] fmr. gov. weld: i think i signed them all. >> i appreciate your comments. fmr. gov. weld: thank you. >> i'm from aarp.

you may want to take a picture. fmr. gov. weld: great. >> i loved your speech. i really liked it. fmr. gov. weld: i thought people might be horrified. >> no. fmr. gov. weld: i wanted to put my finger on the problem. i signed them all. i'll sign more. you've got an unsigned egg? it wasn't on my table. i would've signed it. there you go. good luck. ok. now, i know i'm going to be holding this all day. [inaudible] >> thank you very much. fmr. gov. weld: ok. >> thank you very much. see, this isd:

when i appreciate having two short knees. they sit on an egg. [inaudible] fmr. gov. weld: you want me to sign one of these microphones? [laughter] >> morning, governor. fmr. gov. weld: really great place. pretty special. [inaudible] >> i'm glad you're running. fmr. gov. weld: thank you. >> thank you so much for being here. [inaudible]

>> good luck, governor. fmr. gov. weld: thank you, thank you. [inaudible] >> hi, governor, how are you? fmr. gov. weld: hey. [inaudible]

fmr. gov. weld: i would say it's the issues the country confronts. the president is very popular among his base right now, but it maybe we can change the narrative by: attention to the problems we have here. you know, the new hampshire primary is still a year away. governor, from now, the president is going to declare a national emergency. how does that change the equation? fmr. gov. weld: you know, i don't think that's the biggest issue in the kit. you mate say -- might say it

might be an abuse of power, but he does have that power. >> it even dividing republicans. democrats are posed, but now republicans are opposed, as well. fmr. gov. weld: that's good. maybe it won't happen. as i said, i don't agree the president's policy on immigration. he's just waving a bloody shirt. it's in extremely unattractive. i'm going to take it one step at a time. >> is your decision to run largely so he can't be president or because you can be? fmr. gov. weld: well, my decision is to form an exporter he committee. the decision to run would be a separate decision. as i said in their, i think i can start monday as president of the united states. and i would certainly be a bigger believer in my policies and the current president. >> do you think you could allow the democrats to win in 2020? fmr. gov. weld: well, i'm in the republican primary and i'm going

to say what i think the republicans should do. i'm not going to worry about the democrats. >> are you worried about alienating your own party? fmr. gov. weld: i sure do. i think that's exactly what skilling on in washington. not everyone is going to like it when i say that. i wanted to put my finger on what the problem is. i didn't want to speak to generalities. >> you think there are enough republicans that subscribe to your brand of politics? fmr. gov. weld: we'll see. there are 20 states where the republican primary's are opened to the republican primary. i always benefited that in the massachusetts. >> [inaudible] fmr. gov. weld: it wasn't for want of trying. look at the scrum now. you may see as many as five from massachusetts before it's all over. >> four years ago, you urged

people if they were not going to vote libertarian, vote hillary clinton. you feel hillary clinton would have been a better president right now? fmr. gov. weld: i don't know that. i did think and say at the time i thought there was a stability question about the man who is now the president, and nothing has caused me to see fit to change my opinion. >> how long are you set to explore? fmr. gov. weld: it depends on the response. as i said earlier, you want to make sure the motion doesn't fail for want of the second. and i guess that's the first threshold. but i don't think it will. the response of people when we say i'm running as a republican -- [no audio] >> do you think your role in the 2016 election played at all in effect trump did win the presidency? fmr. gov. weld: no, our vote

came 3-1 to trump. i know democrats don't agree with that. if you add wisconsin to miss clinton, she would have won wisconsin. libertarian will always be a protest vote, or change vote. in the 2016 election, that was going to go to donald j. trump, not hillary rodham clinton. >> is that what you're going for now is a protest vote? fmr. gov. weld: no. >> in 2016, you said you promised to say about -- stay with the libertarian party. fmr. gov. weld: i did. [no audio] i said i was going to -- -- do what id: think is right for the country. >> you said after the 2016 election, libertarians were responsible for trump not winning the popular vote and there were several states,

including new hampshire. so you want new hampshire republicans to help somebody -- fmr. gov. weld: i don't recall saying that. >> the chairman of the delaware republican party? fmr. gov. weld: i told him our votes came 3-1 to trump. and he ran with that. out to you been reaching top republicans in the state to make your case? fmr. gov. weld: not really. i think before i ask people to endorse me and back me, i'm going to get out there and see if i can show some stuff. >> are you going to go beyond new hampshire? fmr. gov. weld: oh, yeah. i think it'll be a national campaign. this is going to be a lot of new hampshire. i'm so close. i do have history in the state. many statewide officials, former state what officials in the state, are good friends of mine. you'll see a lot of me. are you forming an

exploratory committee just in name or are you really running for president? fmr. gov. weld: if i receive virtually unanimous, who do you think you're kidding? i wouldn't do a thing. >> where are you headed next? fmr. gov. weld: we're here today and tomorrow. then on going to be in washington and new york. then i'm going to be back the following week here. and then the week after that here. first and it are, and then unh durham. >> most of your time in new hampshire, at least in the short term? fmr. gov. weld: no, i think once a week maybe. reporter: any way to share what you are doing? fmr. gov. weld: jennifer horn will be happy to to you my schedule. i don't know it. reporter: you think the dam was going to break and other republicans will follow you across the bridge? fmr. gov. weld: i think my old friend john kasich, and he is my

old friend, may have an interest. and governor hogan of maryland may have interest. tractionknow, if i get and cracks appear in the dam of the president's support, i think you may see a gold rush. reporter: you used the term stockholm syndrome. do you feel the republican voters are suffering from a mental health deficiency? fmr. gov. weld: no, i was talking about politicians in washington, d.c., not republican voters at large. >> is there anything in the 2016 libertarian campaign involved in your presidential campaign? fmr. gov. weld: a couple people have said how dare you do this? five times as many said we will be with you. there are some here today, who i shall not name, and as i say, i would not be surprised if some of those people that i mentioned who could serve in the federal government, i think some of them

may help me. and a lot of them are recovering republicans anyway. >> thank you. thank you very much. fmr. gov. weld: thanks, everybody. >> thank you. >> [inaudible] fmr. gov. weld: no campaign role. [inaudible] >> are you jennifer horn? >> i am that. >> you are now! >> we are asking the governor to move on. [inaudible] fmr. gov. weld: we have eight or 10 stops, little stops. i haven't dared go back and look at it.

they cut down the big elm. there were portal parties on the front lawn. none of my kids will even drive by the house. i'm really glad you're running. i'm doing a series of portraits for the atlantic frolic candidates. [inaudible] -- for all the candidates. [no audio] [inaudible] fmr. gov. weld: ok, terrific. [inaudible] >> on tuesday democratic presidential candidate john delaney attended -- the politics and eggs breakfast in new hampshire. he was a u.s. are presented for maryland's 26 district.